Ndujadella or Nduja à la Mort (to the death)
Scott, over at Sausage Debauchery, has been my supplier, my dealer, my main man, for all things Calabrian (and, with his new, virtual store has now become my go-to-guy for all hard-to-find Italian food items). He recently got a crazy request from the owner of Coluccio’s, where he gets the chili peppers that go into nduja. The owner gave him some lardo, some pancetta, and some guanciale, and told Scott to make him some nduja with those. Fuoco! As Scott asked in his appeal for help, what kind of clusterf**k of a salame was he supposed to make with all of that?!
Then inspiration struck: he wants crazy? He came to the right guys; we can show him crazy! If nduja is known as the “the red nutella” because it’s often spread on grilled bread, then why not come up with an ndujatella, a cooked version that would be ready to eat right away? Since I enjoy making emulsified sausages, like mortadella, while Scott has sworn off them, he put me in charge, and this is what I came up with: the same, basic procedures as mortadella, only Calabrian chilis (both concentrate and powder) substituted for the usual, delicate spices. Ndujadella was born! And, as if all those “picantissimo” chilis weren’t enough, why not add some cubes of pork tongue, marinated in my Thai chili fire water?
So, while my nduja di buffala (made with bison meat) ferments, dries, and mellows for a few more weeks, and while my nduja classico (the latest batch made with 50% more hot peppers than the previous one!) needs a few more months, this lighter, less spicy, intro or “gateway” version of nduja is ready to eat now. It’s soft enough that you can still spread it on toast. (Try it with some of Stewart’s chipotle and sun-dried tomato bread!) Fry it up with some scrambled eggs. Or just cut it into chunks and eat it as an appetizer – you’ll find, surprisingly, that the hot chilis actually accentuate the fruit in red wine!
Tags: chilis, emulsified sausage, Italian, pork
January 29th, 2010 at 8:23 am
Other than the fact that the visual sponginess is leaving me uneasy, it sounds pretty damn tasty.
January 29th, 2010 at 9:37 am
Wow, that looks even better than you described!
January 29th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
The holes presumably come from the mix getting aerated as it’s whipped up in the processor. Instead of “spongy,” think “light and airy.” Or, if you think of all the hot chilis this sausage is soaking up, spongy ain’t such a bad thing. Fortunately there’s nothing spongy about the texture, which is soft and creamy and spreadable like a liverwurst sausage.
January 31st, 2010 at 8:20 am
[...] been the most prolific, creating ‘nduja di bufala, ‘nduja pate and most recently an ‘nduja mortadella to make us all jealous and drooling. Once I work through some of my own ‘nduja reserves I [...]
February 1st, 2010 at 2:30 pm
re: bubbles – From watching various documentary-type films, I know that the big boys usually use a vacuum chamber to suck the bubbles out of their emulsification. I’m not sure there would be any way to replicate that at home.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Yeah, somehow I imagine that putting my mouth to the hole at the top of the Robot Coupe and sucking for all I’m worth just wouldn’t have the same effect. Could make a great YouTube clip, though!
February 7th, 2010 at 11:35 am
[...] an nduja pâté, which got rave reviews, and just a couple weeks ago Scott inspired me to make a mortadella with the same Calabrian chilis that go into nduja. I liked this emulsion-sausage version, which we christened ndujadella, but missed the liver and [...]